Elephants Understand Human Gesture, No Training Needed

Elephants understand the human gesture of pointing, new research suggests.

The ability is even more impressive given that the animals received no training to understand the gesture and have never been domesticated.

"By showing that African elephants spontaneously understand human pointing, without any training to do so, we have shown that the ability to understand pointing is not uniquely human but has also evolved in a lineage of animal very remote from the primates," study co-author Richard Byrne of the University of St Andrews said in a statement.

The new finding gives elephants membership in a select club that includes dogs, cats and bottlenose dolphins. Chimpanzees that have lived with humans can be trained to follow a point, but wild chimps typically fare worse than dogs at understanding human gestures.

Byrne and his colleague Anna Smet, also of St. Andrews, studied a group of 11 African elephants that took tourists on rides near Victoria Falls, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The animals had been trained to follow vocal commands, but had never learned pointing.

The team hid tasty morsels of food in several containers, then pointed to the correct bin to direct elephants to the food. The elephants went to the correct food container two-thirds of the time, significantly above chance. All told, five out of 11 of the elephants consistently went to the right container. In contrast, 1-year-old children typically get it right about 70 percent of the time. Even more impressive, many of the pachyderms chose the correct bin from the first try.

"What really surprised us is that they did not apparently need to learn anything. Their understanding was as good on the first trial as the last, and we could find no sign of learning over the experiment," Byrne said.

Those elephants born in captivity or bred for more human contact performed no better at the task.
Though elephants make other gestures with their trunks, no one knows whether those gestures are parallel to pointing.

The findings suggest that elephants' ability to follow a point may arise from their social natures. Elephants live in large groups and display many emotional behaviors, including marking the gravesites of lost pack members and weeping for their dead. Elephants also recognize themselves in a mirror, a hallmark of animals with sociality and empathy.

"What elephants share with humans is that they live in an elaborate and complex network in which support, empathy, and help for others are critical for survival. It may be only in such a society that the ability to follow pointing has adaptive value, or, more generally, elephant society may have selected for an ability to understand when others are trying to communicate with them, and they are thus able to work out what pointing is about when they see it," Byrne said.

The research was published yesterday (Oct. 10) in the journal Current Biology.


Source: livescience.com

Do fish drink water?

                                     

“Water everywhere and not a drop to drink.” Talking about the sea, of course. Each 100 pounds of seawater contains almost 4 pounds of salt. You can’t drink that. What do marine mammals such as dolphins, manatees, orcas, seals and whales drink?

Marine mammals do not actually drink. They get all the water they need from the fish that they eat. The fish they eat do drink the sea water – lots of it – which is processed through diffusion and osmosis.

Marine mammals in captivity that for some reason are not eating are fed freshwater from a pipe or bottle.


Source: didyouknow.org

Did you Knows?

                                             

• the average person falls asleep in 7 minutes
• the average speed of a skydiver is 200kph (124mph)
• the average human brain contains around 78% water
• an average person will spend 25 years asleep
• the average golf ball has 336 dimples
• the average bed contains over 6 billion dust mites
• the average hen lays 228 eggs a year
• the average person laughs 10 times a day
• the average soccer ball is made up of 32 leather panels and held together by 642 stitches
• the average porcupine has 30,000 spikes
• there is enough petrol in a full tank of a Jumbo Jet to drive the average car 4 times around the world
• the average person will consume 100 tons of food and 45,424 liters (12,000 gallons) of water in their lifetime
• the average person goes to the toilet 6 times a day
• the average American eats 263 eggs a year
• the average bank teller loses $250 every year
• the average person has 10,000 taste buds
• the average elephant produces 22kg (50 pounds) of dunn each day
• the average lifespan of a squirrel is 9 years
• the average person swallows 295 times during a meal
• the average 22% of all restaurant meals include potato chips

Curiosities about Cats - 2

                                          

Cats can see 6 times better than humans at night because their eyes amplifies even the dimmest light.

Cats have more bones than humans. Cats have 290 compared to humans, that have 206.

Whiskers and eyelashes, and also the tail, help the cat to keep their balance. Their amazing agility is due to their 500 muscles.

It is easier for a cat to survive a big fall than a small one. Some estimations have said that a cat needs a height of 8 floors to reach a position that allows to fell on their paws.

A cat 's sense of smell is 15 times more powerful than humans'.

Each cat has a different and unique shape for the tip of the nose, that is like our fingerprints.

The diet of a cat must be rich in fats because their bodies don't produce it.

Cats can't detect sweet tastes.

They have 32 muscles in their ears so they can direct them to the source of the sound.

A cat from Texas named Dusty had more than 420 kittens and had her last litter when she was 18.

Chocolate, coffee, and aspirin are some of the substances that are poisonous for cats.

In Asia, black cats are symbol of good luck.

Source: EmmaAlvarezBlog

Curiosities about Cats

The oldest cat in the world lived for 36 years.

And the heaviest one weighted 23 Kg.

A cub of cat that is born with blue eyes may change of eye color some months later.

Cats can smell with their nose but also (like snakes) with the so called Jacobson's Organ, that is inside the mouth, just behind the front teeth, and connects to the nasal cavity.

Cats sleep between 16 and 19 hours of every 24.

They can vocalize up to 100 different sounds.

A cat can jump up to 7 times their height.

When a cat rubs their head against an object or person, it is showing that it is theirs.

When a cat is upside-down, this is a sign of security and affection.

Cats relax from stress scratching a vertical object. This movement activates their circulation and invigorates their body.

Cats hiss to protect themselves and show that they are dangerous, the same as some snakes.

Cats obey women more easily because they perceive better high-pitched sounds.

Cats love kneading with their paws everything that they like. This is something that they learn when they are cubs because with this movement they get more milk from their mother.

Cats appeared on Earth before dogs.

In the ancient Egypt, when a woman was very beautiful, she was called "cat". Women, to look more pretty, painted lines in their eyes imitating the look of cats. This custom has arrived till our days.

Killing a cat in the ancient Egypt was punished with the death. Cats were mummified in company of small rodents.

Some cats like throwing their pellet from their dish. This is to simulate hunting, and is done because of boredom or for playing.

There are also some cats that like to move the water in their dish with the paw. These cats like running water and try to simulate it, because they feel it's healthier. This is an old instinct of cats. Some shops sell fountains for cats for this.

Source: EmmaAlvarezBlog